Salem

The folks back home discussed the value of gold, but little did they know what was actually valuable. The ability to build an archaeology table to sift through dirt as well as mine rubble in order to find not only the usual worms, dirt, gold flakes, and madness-inducing old colony reminders, but also ancient native artifacts as well as the evidence that vikings reached the new world before the colonists did (don't tell Columbus!). This table would increase the time to sift through mine rubble, because of the attention needed, but it wouldn't need a water source. A potential tool could be a brush made from beaver fur. There could even be a pack called the "Frontier Jones" pack with a whip, special speed-enhancing brush, and an assortment of new-world ancient artifacts. Potentially, there could be a museum curator in town interested in purchasing these artifacts. Obviously, this idea came from how time-consuming it is to walk from a land-locked mine to the river, but I think it has a lot of potential for interesting gameplay. Maybe there could be some weapon fragments of Nordic swords, shields, and spears that can be pieced together into weapons.

We have had many a system planned for Archaeology. But have not settled on one yet.

What would be super pro was if you could chain the Stamp Mill and some sort of sifter together such that putting rubble in stamp mill automatically gets picked up by sifter and sifted. Granted, with the water requirement you'd need to load it with water. Though what would be REALLY neat is if you could build the sifter IN the river or, at least, have a mechanic that as long as it was touching the river it was always "full" of water.

But, you know, pipe dreams and what not.